from the why? dept

We're still quite confused about Google's recent decision (under pressure from the US government) to censor its autocomplete suggestions for certain terms that might be related to infringement. But the decision to do so seems even odder now, as we find out that, all this time, Google's been fighting a lawsuit in France that's trying to force the company to do the same thing. Apparently, the French anti-piracy organization SNEP sued about autocomplete, saying that showing suggestions that include things like "torrent," "RapidShare," and "Megaupload" were tantamount to encouraging infringement. Thankfully, both the lower court and now an appeals court have ruled that Google need not censor autocomplete search entries... But it seems like the victory is somewhat meaningless, in that Google has decided to censor itself anyway.

from the oh-come-on dept

Here's yet another ridiculously bad ruling for search engines in Italy. Glyn Moody points us to the news of a blog post by a lawyer involved in the case (against Google) who is happy that his side prevailed and that Google is liable for search autocomplete suggestions. The case involved someone who was upset that doing a Google search on his name popped up "con man" ("truffatore") and "fraud" ("truffa") as autocomplete Google search suggestions. We've seen similar cases elsewhere, and France has (most of the time) also ruled against Google.

Of course, this is ridiculous for a variety of reasons. Google is not "creating" this content. It's accurately suggesting results based on what users are searching. Clearly, people are searching on this particular individual along with the two terms. That's not Google's fault. Yet Google is liable for it?

One interesting footnote: a part of the reason why the court ruled the way it did was because the court noted that Google already edited autocomplete suggestions for issues related to copyright infringement. Funny. That's exactly the issue we warned about when Google made the silly decision (following pressure from the US government) to start blocking certain keywords from autocomplete. The court seems to see this as proof that Google can and should be responsible for the content in that autocomplete box... Once again, it looks like the company would have been better off not meddling.

from the bad-idea dept

One of the key arguments that critics have often made against Google is that the company "meddles" in search results, effectively "picking winners and losers." Google's -- quite reasonable -- response for years has been that it's all in the algorithm, rather than any personal choices. And, the algorithm was just trying to recommend the best result, no matter what that might be. Indeed, this is a perfect and sensible response. However, after lots of pressure from the entertainment industry (and politicians closely associated with the entertainment industry), last month Google announced plans to start censoring "autocomplete" results, such that "terms that are closely associated with piracy" don't appear.

As we noted when the announcement was made, this is really difficult to do in any reasonable manner. What's "closely associated with piracy," one day becomes a legitimate format the next. Take MP3s for example. Five or six years ago, if Google had made this decision, you would imagine that Google might have decided to block "mp3" from autocomplete -- and yet, now, MP3 is the standard that is used around the world in all sorts of legitimate online music stores, including iTunes and Amazon. We pointed out that blocking things like "bittorrent" or just "torrent" would be a mistake of the same nature -- as it's just a standard that has plenty of legitimate uses, even if it's frequently used for unauthorized copying today.

Unfortunately, whoever was in charge of handling this at Google went for a simplistic sledge hammer approach, with the company now dropping a variety of terms, many of which have perfectly legitimate uses. Many of the choices seem totally arbitrary. As expected, BitTorrent and torrent are now blocked -- despite plenty of legal uses, and the fact that BitTorrent itself is a perfectly legal company with tons of companies using its technology for completely noninfringing purposes. In the TorrentFreak link above, there are reactions from a variety of companies, including BitTorrent Inc., RapidShare and Vodo, who all note that this move appears to hurt their legitimate businesses.

And that's where I wonder if this move will backfire in a big way on Google. While the concept of "search neutrality" may be one of the more ridiculous ideas to come out of Google-haters for years, the fact that the company is now clearly hand-picking "winners and losers" when it comes to searches on these kinds of technologies and services seems like something that will be used as evidence against Google at some point.

Google had a strong defense in the past to complaints of bias, in that it was focused on not meddling with its results. However, while this move doesn't directly mess with the actual results, by mucking with autocomplete, it is likely to have an impact on the kinds of searches that people do, driving them away from many perfectly legitimate solutions, for no reason other than that the company caved to pressure based on no legal rationale. All this really does is now open the door for others to demand that Google adjust its search recommendations and results in their favor as well. I'm really surprised Google would agree to do this in the first place, let alone do it in such a... simplistic and overly broad fashion.